Cartoon and Column: GENERALS AND HANDBAGS

Occasionally I’ll make a sarcastic post on social media, and last week I wrote, “Ivanka Trump is excited to work “alongside” Kelly. I’m sure the GENERAL is excited to be working alongside a mediocre fashion designer.”

I also posted, “If anyone looked at me the way Mike Pence looks at Donald Trump, I’d get a restraining order.” Seriously, the guy has an expression of warm satisfaction as though he just made a boom-boom. But that’s an issue for another day.

My comment about Ivanka got a lot of responses, and it gave me this idea. I usually don’t make a post on social media that I’ll use later for a cartoon, but I thought of the cartoon after I mouthed off.

Maybe we are making too much out of Ivanka’s tweet about working “alongside” the general, but it illustrates just how absurd and ridiculous this administration conducts itself. The people Donald Trump has placed in his administration are ludicrous. The rapper Ludacris couldn’t create a more ludicrous staff than Trump.

During the campaign, I heard people say they would vote for Trump because they were pro-military. Trump often states how much he respects the military. Trump doesn’t respect anything, and his actions prove he doesn’t respect the office he holds. The man insulted a former P.O.W. and Gold Star parents. Placing his inexperienced daughter “alongside” a general is further disrespect. A highly-decorated and accomplished general supposedly shares the same status and access to the president as a fashion designer, or in Ivanka’s case, someone who pilfers designs from other designers and then has the products made by eight-year-old children in China.

President John F. Kennedy practiced nepotism when he made his brother the Attorney General, but at least in that case, you could believe Robert Kennedy could actually do the job. Other than Trump sycophants, who believes Ivanka Trump can shape or even understand policy? We can’t expect her influence to be positive as her silence after Trump’s sexist attack on Mika Brzezinski makes her complicit.

Her husband and Trump’s son-in-law is further nepotism you can’t have any faith in. The “kid” has a larger staff than the Secretary of State. Trump has placed him in charge of finding peace in the Middle East (because he’s Jewish), advising the president, reinventing government (The Office of American Innovation), being a “shadow” diplomat, solving the opioid epidemic, handling diplomacy with Mexico and China, “reimagining” Veteran Affairs, reforming the criminal justice system, and laying out the president’s clothes in the morning.

Our confidence that 36-year-old Jared can accomplish any of the above duties is undermined by his defense of meeting Russians which was, “I’m a novice to politics and I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.” How can the guy be expected to do any of those duties when he’s too busy rewriting his security clearance on a daily basis?

Even Don Jr. is in on the nepotism action, even though he’s supposed to be running the Trump Corporation and separated from what’s going on in the White House.

Everyone’s excited about General John Kelly taking over as Chief of Staff. He’s cleaning house a little by getting rid of Anthony Scaramucci and a few other people that the adults didn’t want on the National Security Council. According to reports, all briefs and information has to go through him before it reaches Trump (maybe no more breaking Breitbart news), he’s shutting the door to the Oval Office so “stragglers” won’t enter to put stupid ideas into the president’s head (though he’s capable of doing that on his own), he’s cutting off people in mid-sentence when they’re rambling, and more importantly, everyone has to go through him before meeting with the president, even Ivanka and Jared. I don’t buy that last one. Where will the General be at 8:37 PM when little princess goes up to see daddy? Can the General get Trump to stop watching Fox And Friends?

Kelly has brought structure and discipline to the Oval Office. Trump has never practiced structure, discipline, or sense in his professional or private life. He’s going to hate it and Kelly won’t last beyond six months. Besides, how much structure is he really bringing with the ilk of Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Kellyanne Conway still hanging about?

You can’t shine a turd. Kelly would have more success in getting “presidential” out of a nutless monkey than he will from Donald Trump.
Clay Jones can be reached at clayjonz@gmail.com